Perfect Proposal works its pre-matrimony magic in Cleveland

Want to make sure the proposal to your significant other goes just right? Jay Hobbs believes he can help.Mr. Hobbs is founder and CEO of Perfect Proposal, a marriage proposal planning business that serves Northeast Ohio. Entrepreneur magazine profiles Mr. Hobbs and the business, opening with an anecdote about how he worked with Cleveland client Daniel Mazzeo.From the story: Hobbs listened to Mazzeo's personal story, one that included meeting his girlfriend as a child at his uncle's Cleveland Indians suite. Hobbs planned "a layered experience" inspired by the story that started with a runner sprinkled with rose petals leading to a $3,000 suite at Cleveland's Progressive Field. Inside were balloons, peanuts and a giant bag of Cracker Jacks containing an Indians jersey with her new last name. Later, friends and family arrived to help celebrate. The next day, the couple found themselves on the cover of The Plain Dealer. And of course, she said "yes."Mr. Hobbs, 31, tells Entrepreneur that the idea for his business came to him in a detailed "HD, Imax, 3D" dream in the middle of the night while visiting his mother three years ago during the holidays. He wrote down the key points in a notebook and went back to sleep.“As a financial expert, Hobbs, 31, was adept with business models, giving him a head start in planning his company,” the profile notes. “He talked extensively with people in the wedding industry, asking them what they charged and how they operated. He decided lower-cost Cleveland would be an ideal incubation market, especially given his strong business network in northeastern Ohio. In six months, and with $25,000 of his own money, he had Perfect Proposal up and running.”Mr. Hobbs started with three hires, all experts in the wedding and event industry. He now has seven contractors, who “do everything from taking calls to creating and setting up events with clients,” according to Entrepreneur.The company arranges around three to five proposals every month and has coordinated 150 since launching in 2010.

"We market to people with disposable income, but no time," Hobbs says. Proposals can range from something simple, staged in a romantic restaurant for $149, to something more grandiose costing around $5,000 depending on the client's budget, according to the story.

There's hope

Reuters reports that small U.S. businesses “took on more debt in July, pushing an index of borrowing to a six-year high and adding to evidence that the economic recovery is on firmer ground.”The Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index, which measures the volume of financing to small companies, rose 11% in July to 117.7, the highest level since August 2007. The index registered 105.7 in June, PayNet said, revised from an initial reading of 104.8.Historically, “PayNet's lending index has correlated to overall economic growth one or two quarters in the future,” Reuters reports."There is some optimism returning to small businesses. … They are responding to some demand," PayNet president Bill Phelan tells Reuters. "As long as interest rates are within reasonable boundaries....a strong economy with demand is better than a weak one with low interest rates."Because small companies typically take out loans to buy new tools, factories and equipment, “more borrowing could signal more hiring ahead,” according to the story.Low financial stress at small businesses, with more of them paying back loans on time, also could bode well for future borrowing, Reuters concludes.

Brush with greatness

This charming Q&A in The New York Times raises some history about an old art studio in Cleveland Heights.A feature called Look in the paper's Sunday magazine features images from color slides of jazz greats such as Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie taken around 1950 by a photographer named Nat Singerman.The slides, which are incredible, come from the collection of Joe Lauro, president of the Historic Films Archive in Greenport, N.Y.

Mr. Lauro got the slides from a record dealer in Manhattan, Bob Altshuler, who had acquired the record and photograph collection of Mr. Singerman.From the Q&A: One of the highlights of Nat's collection was autographed 78s in white ink. The other part that no one seemed to be interested in but myself was this group of several hundred slides — stereo slides. They were of varying qualities; some of them had been water damaged. In 1989 or 1990, I purchased some of the slides and a whole bunch of the 78s. I also got a little stereo viewer along with the slides.The thing that was remarkable about the slides was not only the fact that they were in color — which is a very unusual thing for jazz photography during that period — but they also had three-dimensional quality to them. It's just was mind-boggling to see these people in that sort of full-life dimension, like they were right in front of you.So what did Mr. Lauro know of Mr. Singerman?“After I acquired the slides, I contacted Nat's widow, Esther Singerman,” Mr. Lauro says. “She told me he lived in Chardon, Ohio. He ran a photography studio called Character Art Studio in Cleveland Heights. His bread and butter was doing weddings and other events, but primarily weddings in 3-D, and he would produce these slides for people.”Mr. Singerman was a jazz enthusiast who collected old 78s that some of these artists had made when they were much younger. Mr. Lauro says Mr. Singerman had Louis Armstrong records from the 1920s “that Louis would sign in white ink his name, sometimes 'to Nat.'”You also can follow me on Twitter for more news about business and Northeast Ohio.

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